Wireless communication systems are constantly under development. Developing systems provide a cost-effective support of high data rates and efficient resource utilization. One communication system under development is the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) Release 8. An improved version of the Long Term Evolution radio access system is called LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). The LTE is designed to support various services, such as high-speed data, multimedia unicast and multimedia broadcast services.
In LTE-A, the use of relay nodes (RN) has been proposed to enhance coverage and/or throughput. Relay nodes communicate wirelessly with a base station (or eNodeB) and communicate with user equipment on behalf of the base station. Relay nodes may be used to provide a larger coverage without the need to install a complete station.